The present invention relates to a golf club set and, more particularly, to one capable of enabling a long club to have a greater carry, and a short club to have a higher degree of controllability including accuracy in the direction and the carry of a batted ball.
Conventionally, among a plurality of golf clubs constituting a golf club set, the long clubs of smaller club counts (referred to as counts, hereinafter) have been designed to have greater carries of batted balls while the short clubs of larger counts have been designed with importance placed on controllability so as to have accuracy in the directions and the target carries of batted balls.
To satisfy such requested performances, various golf club sets have hitherto been contrived. For example, Japanese patent application Kokai publication No. 2-224679 describes a golf club set, which is designed to gradually reduce the degrees of twisting per unit length as a count becomes larger by gradually increasing the outer diameters of fiber reinforced plastic shafts as the count becomes larger thereby delaying a head return of short clubs at the time of swinging. Japanese patent application Kokai publication No. 5-277211 describes a golf club set, which is designed to gradually increase the diameters of grips as count becomes larger.
For such conventional golf club sets, however, improvements were limited to only long or short clubs, and no improvements have been made on the entire club set. Therefore, there is a need to enhance the function of the entire golf club set from long to short clubs to a much greater degree.
The object of the present invention is to provide a golf club set capable of improving its entire performance by further increasing cries for long clubs and achieve greater controllability for short clubs.
In order to achieve the foregoing object, according to the present invention, a golf club set comprises: a plurality of golf clubs from long clubs to short clubs excluding a putter; and a tapered portion formed from a butt end to a tip end of each club shaft. In this case, an outer diameter of each shaft at the butt end is gradually reduced as a club count becomes larger, and a rate of tapering between the butt end and a position of 200 mm from the butt end (referred to as a middle point, hereinafter) is gradually reduced as the club count becomes larger.
As described above, in the case of the long club, since the outer diameter of the shaft in the butt end portion is large, the club is felt to be light when the grip is held. Therefore, a head weight can be increased in order to raise a meeting ratio to a ball. Furthermore, a hard feeling can be obtained even when the shaft is softened. Therefore, it is possible to increase a carry much more by setting an amount of shaft bending to be large in such a way as to increase a head speed.
In the case of the short club, since the outer diameter of the shaft m the butt end portion is small, a bend point of the shaft becomes higher (closer to the grip). Thus, it is possible to enhance ball controllability.